This weekend after I finished reading Carrie Brown’s The Rope Walk, I needed what I call some “fluff.”  It’s basically a lighter beach read type book that doesn’t call for too much concentration, something more on the entertaining side.  I found it in an older book I’ve been wanting to read for several years: Poppy Z. Brite’s The Crow: The Lazarus Heart.  I landed a copy of it a few weeks ago on Bookmooch. If you’ve seen the movie with Brandon Lee, then you pretty much know the premise behind Brite’s version. It’s a mass market paperback, so three days into it and I’m actually over halfway through.  It’s just over 300 pages.  But I wanted to pause to reflect the first half.

Brite was very popular in the 90s for her Goth horror, using her hometown of New Orleans as a setting.  Working in the bookstores, I knew who she was but I wasn’t into horror then having already had my fill of Stephen King all through high school.  A few years ago I read her Exquisite Corpse.  I was both shocked and impressed. Later, I attempted Drawing Blood, and just couldn’t get into it and soon abandoned the book all together. Brite herself has abandoned horror and now writes Foodie fiction, but still has a loyal following it seems.

The Lazarus Heart is holding my attention fully. It’s the story of Jared Poe, an S&M fetish photographer who returns from the dead to avenge the murder of his lover which he was wrongly accused of.  There’s a certain element left up to the imagination, especially in the opening scene where the crow flies into a New Orleans cemetery and brings Jared back to life, but Brite’s storytelling and imagery is quite beautiful and haunting. The story takes place amongst the androgynous Goth tranny world of the Big Easy, which is being preyed upon by a serial killer obsessed with sex changes.  Yes, that’s disturbing within itself, which is what makes the book so much fun and so bizarre. Brite really visits the minds of her characters and digs deep to expose their nightmares.

I’ll leave it at that and give my final review after I finish it later this week.